RAID ON CAIRO 70 Killed, 100 Hurt In Bomb ‘Accident’

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32222, 14 February 1970, Page 11

RAID ON CAIRO 70 Killed, 100 Hurt In Bomb ‘Accident’

(N Z.P.A.-Reuter —Copyright)

CAIRO, February 13.

President Nasser today faced angry demands for reprisal raids on Israel after that country’s bombing of a metal works on the outskirts of Cairo, in which 70 Egyptians were killed and 100 others were wounded.

As doctors tended the injured—many of whom were critically burned—Egyptian Army engineers, working in a cordoned-off area amid the factory ruins at Abou Zabal, 20 miles north-east of the capital, were reported late last night to have defused three unexploded Israeli time-bombs.

Cairo military officials, who said that this was not the first time the Israelis had dropped delayed-action bombs, scornfully brushed aside the unprecedented warning to Egypt by the Israeli Minister of Defence (General Moshe Dayan) that one unexploded homb was timed to go off in 24 hours. The death toll of the latest raid was the worst suffered by Egyptian civilians in an Israeli attack since the sixday war of June. 1967. and Is regarded in Cairo as a serious intensification of the undeclared Arab-Israeli war Calls for retaliation were not long in coming. Anguished relatives packing ’he corridors of the hospital to which the injured were taken, demanded swift action.

“Why don't we attack Israeli civilians." one sobbing mother cried. “They must pay the price for this.”

“These attacks cannot go unpunished," shouted a man whose son was among those injured. Another, his voice breaking; with emotion, said of the Israelis: “I wish we could wipe them out” About 2000 workers were beginning their morning shift when the Israeli jet aircraft arrived and the bombs, five of them said to be napalm,: beean to fall.

Seconds later, the factory's maintenance workshop and power plant were mounds of rubble. The administrative building was a shambles, with broken desks and typewriters, uneaten sandwiches and personal belongings strewn among the debris. Every window was shattered and the corridors stained with blood. In Tel Aviv, a military spokesman said that Israel’s policy of striking only at

(military targets was un-i changed, and that the bombing of the factory was accidental. “. . . It appears that one of our aircraft may have dropped bombs, as a result of technical error, outside the target area," the spokesman said after the debriefing of the jpilots who had taken part in! two raids on military targets! close to Cairo Airport and) near the huge industrial com-1 plex of Helwan. Soon afterwards, Israel took) the unprecedented step of telling Egypt that she had I dropped an 8501 b delayedaction bomb near Cairo, and that one of her raiding aircraft may have oombed a 1 civilian area in error General Dayan himself got in touch with the Egyptian authorities, through the International Red Cross and the United Nations, to warn them that the bnmb was timed to explode after 24 hours, and that it should be defused immediately. U.S. Condemnation In Washington the United States condemned the Israeli air raid on the factory and also attacks by Arab terrorists on passengers travelling on the El Al Airline. ' The Under-Secretary of State (Mr Elliot Richardson), expressing grave concern over the continuing violence in the Middle East, announced that the United States had made an appeal i for the restoration of the ’ 1967 Arab-Israeli crease-fire i at the talks by the repre-i sentatives of the four Great) Powers on the Middle East) situation.

The State Department said that the Assistant Secretary of State (Mr Joseph Sisco) had telephoned the Israeli

i Ambasador in Washington I (Lieutenant-General Yitzhak Rabin) to express America’s ! concern about the attack on the metalworks and to notify him of the latest United States appeal for a cease-fire. In Moscow, the official Soviet Union news agency. Tass. described the Israeli attack on the Cairo factory as “a barbarous raid.” and it accused Israel of committing “one more bloody crime against the peaceful people of the United Arab Republic.” Tass added: “Neither this nor any other crime of the Israeli military—which is trying to break the spirit of the Egyptian people, frighten them and sow panic—will yield the desired result." The agency’s Cairo correspondent reported that two Israeli aircraft strafed the factory with rockets while 1800 workers were in the area, then dropped napalm and time-bombs which endangered rescue operations.